John Ringo: Princess of Wands

“Another Saturday night practice?” Barbara asked, incredulously.

“Coach Sherman says that there’s no such thing as too much preparation,” Allison said as she climbed in the SUV. The team had gotten another win, with Barb had to admit much better batting this time. “And it’s not really a practice. Coach calls it a team-building exercise. We’re supposed to wear walking stuff; we’re going to go on a hike in the woods.”

“At night ?” Barbara asked, curiously.

“That’s part of the team building,” Allison said. “He said that you have to know the dark in yourself to bring out the light. So we’re going on a night hike to get accustomed to looking at the dark.”

“O-kay,” Barb said, shaking her head. “I guess if it helps you win…”

Allison was not nearly as chipper when Barbara picked her up at the darkened field the next Saturday. In fact, she looked as if she had been crying.

“Are you okay?” Barb asked, worriedly.

“I’m fine,” Allison said, getting in the front seat and keeping her head down.

“Team building was kind of tough?” Barbara asked, pulling out of the parking lot. The night was dark and overcast but the half moon was struggling to shine through the clouds.

“Yeah,” Allison said, keeping her head down.

“So what did you do?” Barb asked.

“Nothing I want to talk about,” Allison said, turning to look out the window.

“Allison, I want a straight answer,” Barbara said, sharply. “Did anything wrong happen?”

“No, Mom!” Allison answered, looking up at her. “It was just what the coach was talking about. We just… went for a walk and… talked.”

“Just walked and talked, huh?” Barb said. “So why were you crying?”

“I wasn’t,” Allison said, looking away again. “I just got something in my eye.”

“You’re a lousy liar, honey,” Barbara said, softly. “You get that from me. Why were you crying?”

“Well…” Allison said then shrugged. “We were talking about things that bother us. It was, like, therapy, I guess. That was why I was crying. That’s all, Mom, honest.”

Barb started to reply and then decided it was the wrong time.

“Are you going to have another one of these ‘team-building’ exercises next week?”

“No,” Allison said. “Next week is spring break, remember?”

“Yes, I’d remembered,” Barbara said. “I was hoping that Coach Sherman had.”

The season started up with a bang after spring break with two games in three days, both of which the team took. So far the Algomo Middle School Girls’ Softball team had a series of straight wins and the magic of Coach Bobby Sherman seemed to be rubbing off on his new team.

The coach had scheduled two more “additional team-building” exercises that week, however, and the hours that the girls were putting in was starting to tell. By the end of the week, Allison was getting bags under her eyes from late night team-building exercises combined with her homework load, cheerleading and gym classes. Then she came home with a permission form for an “all day team-building exercise” on Saturday. The girls were to be dropped off at noon and picked up at midnight.

“This is too much,” Barb said, waving the form in the air as she practically screamed over the phone to Cindy. “Is he nuts ?”

“You’re the one that’s always pushing for the girls to do better,” Cindy said, unhappily.

“They’re fourteen ,” Barbara pointed out.

“Barb, I’m with you on this one,” Cindy said. “But Coach Sherman’s making these things mandatory for continuing in the team. I’m thinking of pulling Brandi, frankly. She’s getting really worn down.”

“So’s Allison,” Barbara said, bitterly. “And I’m not all that happy about a man I don’t know very well spending all this time with my daughter in conditions in which parents are not welcome.”

“Well, call him,” Cindy said. “You’d be better at that than I am. And I’m pretty sure we’re not the only ones that are getting tired of all this ‘team building.’ ”

Coach Sherman was surprisingly hard to run down. But she’d managed to contact his wife, a colorless woman on the phone, and arranged a meeting at the Hazelwood Mall Starbucks. The coach, as it turned out, worked in the Claire’s Boutique in the mall, which eliminated “a better job” as the reason for the move. Unless he’d worked at a McDonald’s in Mobile.

Sherman was middling height but gave the impression of size. He had broad shoulders and strong looking arms as if he’d been a serious athlete when he was younger. Over the years, though, he’d run to fat and had a large beer gut. His hair and skin were dark with a look of either Hispanic or maybe Native American in his features. He had dark eyes that were remarkably piercing, though. Barb had only ever seen him from a moderate range and hadn’t realized how startling his eyes were. She could see why Allison would have dubbed him “creepy” when she first met him. He also had a small, blurred, tattoo on the web of his right thumb. Barbara couldn’t quite make it out.

She suspected that some women would find him very attractive. Barb was not one of them. He came across far too much the “macho man.” Barbara counted among her friends both members of special operations groups and Special Circumstances operatives who faced death from both natural and supernatural causes, often on a daily basis. This guy wasn’t even in their class.

“A pleasure to meet you, Coach Sherman,” Barb said, standing up from her table and shaking his hand.

“My pleasure, I’m sure,” the coach replied, not even bothering to hide the fact that he was looking at her chest. She’d dressed conservatively for the meeting so there wasn’t even cleavage on display. But his eyes went right to the breasts. After a long moment’s perusal he looked her in the eye and winked. Then when he withdrew his hand from hers, reluctantly, he ran his thumb across the palm of her hand.

Barb had had the trick done to her before and, as always, it gave her a shiver of sexuality. She also thought it was about as low a trick as you could play on a female; the reaction was entirely involuntary and had little or nothing to do with actual attraction. It was the equivalent of a goose in her mind.

Barb realized right then that she wanted Allison off the team. Wins or no, this guy was a predator. He wasn’t just flirting, he was making an overt move on her. Given that she was married and a mother of one of the girls on his team, he either had to be crazy or he thought it would help his case. Which was just as crazy.

Furthermore, he gave off the “seducer” feel. He had a bag full of tricks that probably worked on women or girls who had never been up against a seducer. Barb had been to far too many company parties, and had far too many covert and overt offers when she was selling real estate, to be even slightly interested. Teenage girls were something else.

“I wanted to talk to you about all these extra practices,” Barb said, ignoring the wink and the thumb. “Some of the parents, and I’m among them, feel that the girls are getting a little worn out by all the time they’re putting in. Among other things, most of the girls are involved in more than one activity. Spending all this time on softball alone is wearing them out.”

“I realize that, Mrs. Everette,” Sherman said, leaning forward to look her in the eye and sliding immediately into “professional coach” mode as if the original “lounge lizard” had never existed. “All I can say is that these methods work . My job, my mission , is to have a winning team. Not just this year but every year. I’ve honed my Focus-On-Win program and I know that it works. I’ve proven that it works. If the parents want just a regular team, win a few, lose a few, it all evens out in the end, I’m not your coach. If you want a team that wins , then they have to stick to the program. And that program is not an easy program. I put that in the information sheet when I sent it out with the girls at the beginning of the season. If Allison wants to quit the team, that’s up to you and Allison. But if she wants to play, she practices when I schedule a practice. Or a team-building exercise. The mind is as ten-to-one to the body in sports. The girls have to get their minds around Focus-On-Win. To do that they have to be cleared of all the detritus that people pick up and see themselves, and their teammates, clearly. They have to know their personal strengths and weaknesses and those of their team. And they must be a team . Every step of their training, every practice and every team-building exercise is for the purpose of building on those points. Batting and catching come after the mind is prepared, as automatically as breathing.”